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U.S. tortured suspects after Sept. 11, report finds

An independent think tank’s report says the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the “indisputable” use of torture after Sept. 11, and urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.

By Matt Spetalnick and Jane SuttonReuters

Tues., April 16, 2013

WASHINGTON/MIAMI—An independent task force issued a damning review of Bush-era interrogation practices on Tuesday, saying the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the “indisputable” use of torture, and it urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.

In one of the most comprehensive studies of U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects, the panel concluded that never before had there been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after Sept. 11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

“It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” the 11-member task force, assembled by the non-partisan Constitution Project think tank, said in their 577-page report.

The scathing critique of methods used under the Republican administration of former president George W. Bush also sharpened the focus on the plight of inmates at Guantanamo, which Bush opened and his Democratic successor has failed to close.

Obama banned abusive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding when he took office in early 2009, but the widely condemned military prison at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba has remained an object of condemnation by human rights advocates.

The task force called the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo “abhorrent and intolerable” and called for it to be closed by the end of 2014 when NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan is due to end and most U.S. troops will leave.

But the 2014 goal will be hard to achieve because of legal, legislative and political obstacles Obama faces. While the White House says he remains committed to shutting Guantanamo, he has offered no new path to doing so in his second term.

The release of the encyclopedic report comes in the midst of the latest round of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo, which has become an enduring symbol of widely criticized Bush-era counterterrorism practices, where military officials say 43 prisoners are currently on a hunger strike.

Members of the task force described themselves as the closest thing to a “truth commission” since Obama decided early in his presidency against convening a national commission to investigate post-Sept. 11 practices.

The panel, which included leading politicians from both parties, two U.S. retired generals and legal and ethics scholars, spent two years examining the U.S. treatment of suspected militants detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Panel members interviewed former Clinton, Bush and Obama administration officials, military officers and former prisoners, and the investigation looked at U.S. practices at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the CIA’s former secret prisons overseas.

The task force was chaired by Asa Hutchinson, a Republican former congressman and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration, and James Jones, a Democratic former congressman who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

In a finding the panel said was its most notable and was reached “without reservation,” the report said, “Torture occurred in many instances and across a wide range of theatres.”

But the panel concluded there was “no firm or persuasive evidence” that the use of such techniques yielded “significant information of value.”

“The nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture,” the report said, though it did not name names.

The task force, while concluding that U.S. and international laws were violated, did not recommend legal action against any of those involved but it did press for tighter rules to prevent a recurrence of torture.

“We as a nation have to get this right,” Hutchinson told a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

The panel urged the U.S. government to release as much classified information as possible to help understand what went wrong and cope better with the next crisis.

“Publicly acknowledging this grave error, however belatedly, may mitigate some of those consequences and help undo some of the damage to our reputation at home and abroad,” the report said.

The task force also concluded that force-feeding hunger-striking detainees is a form of abuse and should end. “But at the same time the United States has a legitimate interest in preventing detainees from starving to death,” the panel said.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross last week expressed opposition to the force-feeding of prisoners and said he urged Obama to do more to resolve the “untenable” legal plight of inmates held there.

The hunger strike began in February to protest the seizure of personal items from detainees’ cells. About a dozen are being force-fed liquid meals through tubes.

Guards swept through communal cellblocks at the camp on Saturday and moved the prisoners into one-man cells.

“The action was taken to ensure the health and safety of the detainees, not to ‘break’ the hunger strike,” said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention centre.

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